Hey, my conclusion is no dumber than assuming flying saucers were around in the first place. But that didn’t stop people from assuming UFOs were behind the turbine’s destruction.

What’s funny is that we have a whole pile of rational explanations for this event. The lights have been identified as fireworks. While they probably didn’t destroy the turbine, it’s not completely out of the question. More likely, though it was a coincidence: the weather conditions were very cold, with icing a problem. Ice on one blade could have been flung into another, causing the destruction. Or ice could have built up in a crack or seam on the blade, bending it, throwing it off balance. At the size and speed of those blades, a small deviation can cause catastrophic damage.

Heck, even someone taking a shot at it with a rifle would explain what happened.

But that didn’t stop the BBC and other news outlets from devoting a lot of time and space to the UFO angle (including The Mirror, which also posted a picture of a flying saucer from the movie "Forbidden Planet"). Of course, they’re just quoting Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, the owner of the turbine:

“Until we have some idea, some plausible explanation that it was not a UFO, I don’t think we should rule it out”.

Brilliant! Of course, they have no evidence Doctor Who didn’t do it, so they can’t rule that out either. Or maybe it was Jenny McCarthy! Windmills cause autism! Why, that would even explain Don Quixote! Was Cervantes ever chelated?

And to top it all off, the Ecotricity site has been using this for publicity, saying, incredibly, "We don’t as yet have any evidence that points us to a cause … but speculation in the press is rife." Yes, speculation has been rife because the CEO of your company specifically mentioned UFOs.

Sheesh.

This kind of breathless nonsense is really, really dumb. It’ll waste time during the investigation, it wastes space in the news, and it reduces the overall population’s IQ by some fraction of a point as well.

Feh.

But hey, at least I can use this graphic now:

Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to John J Dempster, Thomas Siefert, and James Oberg.

Not only are those windmills messing up navigation sense of migratory birds, but it seems they have similar influence on alien spacecraft technology as well. Are birds from space? Or perhaps reptilian aliens come from the same branch of reptiles that all birds evolved from?

Anyways – strange lights and wind turbine failure?! Anyone thought of lightning? It happened some years ago, close to where I used to live, and the result were similar to that, shown in the picture. The scorching on the blades made it quite obvious then. That is, if it wasn’t zapped by a UFO 😉

The wind turbine destruction was an inside job! See how one of the two remaining blades is bent, like it had been melted? That’s impossible given the temperatures we are supposed to believe this event occurred at. Steel will only melt at 1500°F, so it must have been explosives that were planted there. And who else could have planted the explosives so secretively but Gordon Brown and the government of the United Kingdom? This is obviously just a ruse so Brown can justify his planned invasion of Denmark.

Having once worked with the largest danish manufacturer of wind turbines, I’ll hazard a guess at a combination of lightning, rain and freezing. Each time a lighning strikes a wind turbine blade, microscopic cracks develop in the outer layer. When rain water seeps into these cracks, it stays there. Then comes winter and freezing, which will expand the water ever so slightly, opening the cracks a bit mor, making room for more water … Repeat that cycle until the blade has lost enough structural strenght, to break off under stress.

We have a lot of NIMBY people over here trying to convince everyone that wind turbines cause epileptic seizures from “strobing”, kill birds by the hundreds, and fling ice for miles damaging homes and cars.

You’re being a little hard on Ecotricity – the news entry you link to is very obviously a joke, with a flying cow in the picture and the words “On a serious note…” underneath. They have to respond somehow (turbines flying apart is serious!) and poking lighthearted fun at the conspiracy theorists seems entirely appropriate to me.

The comments here are very disappointing for a supposedly informed, pro-science crowd.
Many of the explanations put forth here have been ruled out. For example, the Company head has
indicated that they have ruled out ice. Fireworks? Possible, but unlikely. Skepticism is fine so long as it doesn’t take the tone of an almost religious disbelief. If we believed the skeptics of the past , we might still believe the earth is flat. Instead of looking the other way, we should be looking carefully at the results of any analysis as the explanation would be interesting….any way you look at it.

In the “your emails” section, the first one from “Gareth Hill – Rhos resident” is from me trying to add a bit of Teh Sensibull into the mix. Unfortunately, the number of sensible comments is just drowned out by the comments from gullible idiots.

Had to laugh at Carol’s comments on the Berwyn “UFO crash” too. A UFO story which has been thoroughly debunked a LONG time ago…

@Raj….
What exactly are you saying? That aliens could have caused the damage? Why would that even be considered a possibility? Because these wind turbines sit high in the air and aliens have a notoriously poor piloting record? Oh yeah, the crash at Roswell… (Shakes head).

I saw the article and it boiled my blood. I tried to chat with a friend who is (to be polite) intrigued by the unusual explanation and I suggested perhaps fatigue of the structure, or a rifle bullet which could weaken the structure sufficiently without leaving (much) evidence.
I reckon it was structural – I believe the good Dr Phil once posted a link to a (Canadian?) wind turbine disintegrating, guess the regulation/braking system failed on that one.

I am currently on a job seekers course and four of the people were believing this was real without any thinking about it at all. I looked at the photo of the UFO and all I could see was everning sky and a lens flare.

@Nemo
“These things are so fragile, and fail so spectacularly. I think we should be looking more at non-turbine-based generation.”

I agree. I don’t know all the details nor if the manufacturers claims are accurate, but these unconventional wind turbines at least appear to be a great solution. They are built like the ducted turbo-fan engine on a commercial airplane. They are much smaller and safer then conventional turbines, can run at higher wind speeds, can be placed closer together, transported easier, etc.

I suppose in fairness though, an object which is both airbourne and unidentified is, by definition, an Unidentified Flying Object. Unfortunately, the tabloids fail to grasp the principle that UFO doesn’t necessarily equal aliens…

Having never worked with a windmill I don’t know if this is possible, but aren’t windmills just large electric generators? Couldn’t the generator itself of been what was causing the strange lights? Depending on where and how the failure occurred its seems that a large generator could cause some arcing.

“What seems to have happened is an alien being has travelled millions of light years across space from a planet we have never heard of, using technology we can only dream about, and then collided with a windfarm.”

Sadly this was a lead story (last of the headlines ) on Channel 10 late news in Australia. They accompanied their 2-5 min (therabouts?) story here with fuzzy footage of a light in the sky & the damaged turbine, spun the “Flying Saucer did it!” angle further than Warnie (Aussie spun bowler – Non-cricket fans y’don’t know what you’re missing out on! 😉 ) The might’ve been ice or something rational idea was never mentioned & the channel ten news generally presented credulous tripe with nary a skeptic or critical thought in sight.

Aliens hate green energy and want us to burn coal. Wasn’t that the plot of the Charlie Sheen classic THE ARRIVAL?

I’d argue this does point to a problem in efforts to speed us into entirely “green” energy too quickly. I love wind power turbines, but they have been documented to kill wildlife in a number of unfortunate ways, and are relatively expensive per Kw/hour. If storms take this kind of toll we may need to make some leaps in materials or engineering designs before we fast-track a lot more wind farms. We need them, but the evidence shows they have their drawbacks.

On more thing to RAJ– I don’t think skeptics would keep us believing IN a flat earth, I think it was the brash skeptics who noticed the little bits of evidence (shadows in different locations, lunar eclipses, etc.) who moved us to the round earth ideas. Show me a person using real science in UFOdom and I’ll accept that as a realm worthy of honor.

We are not very clever, 62 years on, and we still have not solved the mystery of unidentfied flying objects [whatever they are] Surely the best
answer to date to the serious Windmill damage is that an object of that nature simply hit it as it passed too close.[ I am 72 and wondering if it is safe to fly anymore] Dennis

For real people? This is stupid stuff made by the same people who believe in paranormal activity…. they want to believe the wierdest things……. and even if aliens really did this then it was because the wind turbines kills birds. First of all There is no such thing as aliens being green men. The word aliens means life that is not from your home planet…… when someone says alien they think of a green man with big eyes….. Its all stupid movies getting to the youth. These are the types of aliens….. Reptillions, Greys, Blues, E.T, Nordic, And many more. Its ignorant people that say alien means a green man. Yes the peaceful and most of our galaxy is full of either lizard-like creatures and green men-like creatures. We are the creatures that are not smart and are corrupted by war, murder, greed, power, hatred, and ignorance. We have all this because we cant learn to share, have peace, and love all races. We humans need to change our ways now or it will be chaos on our world.